World Bank approaches UIDAI to share its experiences with other countries

Nigeria recently became the first country to send a team to India under the World Bank aegis to study the UIDAI model and a team from Tanzania is expected this month.Aman Sharma | ET Bureau | September 09, 2016, 07:49 IST

The World Bank has approached the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to share its experiences on the implementation of Aadhaar biometric identification of citizens with other countries.

Nigeria recently became the first country to send a team to India under the World Bank aegis to study the UIDAI model and a team from Tanzania is expected this month, UIDAI chief executive Ajay Bhushan Pandey told ET.

“This is happening under the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative. We will offer all help to visiting countries by way of knowledge exchange,” Pandey said.

The World Bank confirmed this to ET. “ID4D has sought the experience and lessons from UIDAI implementation to share learnings with interested countries,” the multilateral development lender said in an emailed response to ET’s queries.

Many other countries have also sought UIDAI’s help independently, the UIDAI CEO said. These include India’s close diplomatic partners in the neighbourhood, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, whose teams have come to see the UIDAI model.

A senior government official, on the condition of anonymity, told ET that the international interest in Aadhaar stems from the fact that India now has the biggest biometric identity database and has “leapfrogged” over the efforts of many other countries in Africa and Asia who do have a database of citizens, but in the form of paper-based register records.

“Countries are eager to know how a 104 crore-strong biometric database was built and will be used for determining identity,” this official said.

UIDAI is taking care to not share the intricate security and IT details of the Aadhaar project with the foreign countries who intend to replicate the same.

“We are only sharing the broad framework and architecture of the Aadhaar project, the enrolment and authentication strategy followed by us and the update process. UIDAI cannot execute the project for any foreign country as we are bound by the Aadhaar Act which applies only to India,” a senior official said.

The World Bank said ID4D is a cross-sectoral initiative of the World Bank Group with the objective of “making everyone count” by providing an identity and fostering digital identification for all.

“The initiative looks to share knowledge and identify good practices across countries interested in digital identification, recognising the transformational potential of 21st century ID systems for the delivery of basic services to the poor,” it said in the email to ET.

As per details available on the World Bank website on ID4D, there are an estimated 1.5 billion people world-wide, majority of them living in Africa and Asia, who do not have an official, government-issued and recognised document as a proof of their legal identity.